How To Facilitate Decision Making and Problem Solving

In my first LinkedIn Newsletter I spelled out what Modern Analysis looks like, and discussed the Dos, Don'ts, and context of following Modern Analysis musts:

• Customer Focus
• Facilitating Decision Making & Problem Solving
• Experiment
• Collaborate Differently
• Your Actions Matter
• Own Your Craft
• Always Be Learning
• Keeper of Responsible Decisions

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In the last issue, I focused on the first piece, an extreme customer focus. 

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In this issue, I want to deep dive into facilitating decision-making and problem-solving.

Business analysis is all about the decisions (big and small) and problem-solving (at many levels) that organizations and teams collaborate on.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------DO: See your role as a facilitator of problem-solving and decision making; facilitating the process and a group through a change

DON'T: See your role as a documenter of requirements or documenting the solution. This might be the output, but is a very small piece of what it takes to succeed.

CONTEXT: Analysis helps organizations change. Analysis can’t just be about documenting! Remember that documenting is a tool that is part of a bigger problem solving and facilitation toolkit. Use it wisely! Are you documenting for the right reasons?

Examples of decisions that good analysis facilitates:

• Which customer problems are worth focussing on?
• Which project and product opportunities should we focus on and in what order?
• Which customer feedback to act on? And, which not to act on?
• What are the patterns in customer feedback?
• What patterns have the most impact on our strategy?
• What hypothesis and assumptions are we making about the customer problems, actions, behaviors, and needs?
• What options and alternatives are feasible to solve (or have a good chance at solving) a customer problem or opportunity, or a business problem or opportunity?
• What user/customer actions are the most important to change in order to solve the problem or learn more about the problem?
• What data and rules guide, and are used (and necessary) in the process that user/customer uses to achieve the goal? What is the relationship to the problem being solved?

If we keep going, we also see that every “requirement” (for those that write requirements documents) is really assumptions disguised as decisions. “Requirements” are really detailed decisions to move forward in testing out the assumption that a given requirement will solve a problem or opportunity.

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?What does a “facilitating decisions and problems” mindset in an analysis professional look like?

→ We use various elicitation and analysis techniques to facilitate conversions about these problems, opportunities, and decisions among cross-functional groups of stakeholders.  

→ We drive the process for the stakeholder group to make sure the right problem is the focus and there is a shared understanding as a group.

→ We make sure the right decisions are made, at the right time, with the right people involved.

→ We help stakeholder groups determine if a decision can wait or not, needs more information or not, and what options we have as a team.

→ We propose experiments and help define and plan them, to work through ambiguity and risk

Doing great analysis is often more about your mindset, approach, and technique more than the templates, documents, and details you work on. It is often about understanding leader's and stakeholder's intent rather than what they specifically ask for. This can often mean appropriately challenging what is asked for by clarifying the problem to solve and the decisions that need to be made. Yes, facilitating the process of problem-solving and decision making is a different mindset than completing requirements documents or being a subject matter expert on a process or system.

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Some basic steps you can take to Facilitate Problem Solving:

1. Draft the problem statement and then facilitate a conversation with key stakeholders on refining the problem statement
2. Facilitate a conversation on options and alternatives to solve the problem (even if a solution is already identified). If options and alternatives have not yet been discussed, there is a big opportunity being missed.
3. Facilitate a decision on what option the team will move forward with and with what scope (prototype, experiment, or more)?
4. Define success criteria with the group and how to measure them as you work.

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Some basic steps you can take to Facilitate Decision Making:

1. Define the decision to be made and the key people involved in making it
2. Define the difference between the “decision-maker” and those that have input
3. Facilitate the conversation on the timing and risk of when a decision needs to be made
4. Help the group with getting to the data needed have a great conversation and to make the decision 

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Bring These Together:

Consider a “Decision Tree” of decisions that need to be made to solve a defined problem

There are literally hundreds of techniques to help analysis professionals facilitate problem-solving and decision-making at all levels of detail.

What techniques do you use to facilitate decision-making and problem-solving?

Comment below!

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Angela is passionate about helping organizations and professionals modernize analysis practices. Angela has been working to modernize analysis practices for over 20 years with a focus on innovation, collaboration, and lean analysis techniques to keep teams moving forward!